‘Donnie Brasco’ Writer Paul Attanasio To Update ‘Scarface’

College guys will soon have an updated poster to hang on their dorm room walls, because a Scarface remake is in the works at Universal. Now word on the street is that a new writer with a gangster film pedigree has been hired to update the story.

The remake of Brian De Palma’s 1983 drug trade tale, which is a remake of Howard Hawks’ 1932 illegal booze tale, was announced last year, with David Ayer, screenwriter of Training Day and the recent End of Watch, as the scribe. Now, according to Deadline, Paul Attanasio has been hired to rewrite the script.

According to Film School Rejects, Attanasio has already written the gangster film Donnie Brasco, as well as the drama The Good German and several Homicide: Life On the Street episodes, so he seems like a sensible choice to update the classic remake.

There’s no word yet on who will inhabit the role of Tony Montana, played iconically by Al Pacino in the 1983 version. The new film will apparently not be a direct remake, but rather take the basic ideas of the first two films and interpret them for a contemporary story. There’s also only speculation about what illegal products Tony will be dealing with this time.